Alternatives to GraphiQL logo

Alternatives to GraphiQL

GraphQL, Apollo, Postman, REST, and Slick are the most popular alternatives and competitors to GraphiQL.
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What is GraphiQL and what are its top alternatives?

An in-browser IDE for exploring GraphQL.
GraphiQL is a tool in the Database Tools category of a tech stack.
GraphiQL is an open source tool with 15.6K GitHub stars and 1.7K GitHub forks. Here’s a link to GraphiQL's open source repository on GitHub

Top Alternatives to GraphiQL

  • GraphQL
    GraphQL

    GraphQL is a data query language and runtime designed and used at Facebook to request and deliver data to mobile and web apps since 2012. ...

  • Apollo
    Apollo

    Build a universal GraphQL API on top of your existing REST APIs, so you can ship new application features fast without waiting on backend changes. ...

  • Postman
    Postman

    It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide. ...

  • REST
    REST

    An architectural style for developing web services. A distributed system framework that uses Web protocols and technologies. ...

  • Slick
    Slick

    It is a modern database query and access library for Scala. It allows you to work with stored data almost as if you were using Scala collections while at the same time giving you full control over when a database access happens and which data is transferred. ...

  • Spring Data
    Spring Data

    It makes it easy to use data access technologies, relational and non-relational databases, map-reduce frameworks, and cloud-based data services. This is an umbrella project which contains many subprojects that are specific to a given database. ...

  • DataGrip
    DataGrip

    A cross-platform IDE that is aimed at DBAs and developers working with SQL databases. ...

  • DBeaver
    DBeaver

    It is a free multi-platform database tool for developers, SQL programmers, database administrators and analysts. Supports all popular databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, Teradata, MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, etc. ...

GraphiQL alternatives & related posts

GraphQL logo

GraphQL

33K
27.1K
310
A data query language and runtime
33K
27.1K
+ 1
310
PROS OF GRAPHQL
  • 75
    Schemas defined by the requests made by the user
  • 63
    Will replace RESTful interfaces
  • 62
    The future of API's
  • 49
    The future of databases
  • 13
    Self-documenting
  • 12
    Get many resources in a single request
  • 6
    Query Language
  • 6
    Ask for what you need, get exactly that
  • 3
    Fetch different resources in one request
  • 3
    Type system
  • 3
    Evolve your API without versions
  • 2
    Ease of client creation
  • 2
    GraphiQL
  • 2
    Easy setup
  • 1
    "Open" document
  • 1
    Fast prototyping
  • 1
    Supports subscription
  • 1
    Standard
  • 1
    Good for apps that query at build time. (SSR/Gatsby)
  • 1
    1. Describe your data
  • 1
    Better versioning
  • 1
    Backed by Facebook
  • 1
    Easy to learn
CONS OF GRAPHQL
  • 4
    Hard to migrate from GraphQL to another technology
  • 4
    More code to type.
  • 2
    Takes longer to build compared to schemaless.
  • 1
    No support for caching
  • 1
    All the pros sound like NFT pitches
  • 1
    No support for streaming
  • 1
    Works just like any other API at runtime
  • 1
    N+1 fetch problem
  • 1
    No built in security

related GraphQL posts

Shared insights
on
Node.jsNode.jsGraphQLGraphQLMongoDBMongoDB

I just finished the very first version of my new hobby project: #MovieGeeks. It is a minimalist online movie catalog for you to save the movies you want to see and for rating the movies you already saw. This is just the beginning as I am planning to add more features on the lines of sharing and discovery

For the #BackEnd I decided to use Node.js , GraphQL and MongoDB:

  1. Node.js has a huge community so it will always be a safe choice in terms of libraries and finding solutions to problems you may have

  2. GraphQL because I needed to improve my skills with it and because I was never comfortable with the usual REST approach. I believe GraphQL is a better option as it feels more natural to write apis, it improves the development velocity, by definition it fixes the over-fetching and under-fetching problem that is so common on REST apis, and on top of that, the community is getting bigger and bigger.

  3. MongoDB was my choice for the database as I already have a lot of experience working on it and because, despite of some bad reputation it has acquired in the last months, I still believe it is a powerful database for at least a very long list of use cases such as the one I needed for my website

See more
Nick Rockwell
SVP, Engineering at Fastly · | 46 upvotes · 3.2M views

When I joined NYT there was already broad dissatisfaction with the LAMP (Linux Apache HTTP Server MySQL PHP) Stack and the front end framework, in particular. So, I wasn't passing judgment on it. I mean, LAMP's fine, you can do good work in LAMP. It's a little dated at this point, but it's not ... I didn't want to rip it out for its own sake, but everyone else was like, "We don't like this, it's really inflexible." And I remember from being outside the company when that was called MIT FIVE when it had launched. And been observing it from the outside, and I was like, you guys took so long to do that and you did it so carefully, and yet you're not happy with your decisions. Why is that? That was more the impetus. If we're going to do this again, how are we going to do it in a way that we're gonna get a better result?

So we're moving quickly away from LAMP, I would say. So, right now, the new front end is React based and using Apollo. And we've been in a long, protracted, gradual rollout of the core experiences.

React is now talking to GraphQL as a primary API. There's a Node.js back end, to the front end, which is mainly for server-side rendering, as well.

Behind there, the main repository for the GraphQL server is a big table repository, that we call Bodega because it's a convenience store. And that reads off of a Kafka pipeline.

See more
Apollo logo

Apollo

2.4K
1.8K
25
GraphQL server for Express, Connect, Hapi, Koa and more
2.4K
1.8K
+ 1
25
PROS OF APOLLO
  • 12
    From the creators of Meteor
  • 8
    Great documentation
  • 3
    Open source
  • 2
    Real time if use subscription
CONS OF APOLLO
  • 1
    File upload is not supported
  • 1
    Increase in complexity of implementing (subscription)

related Apollo posts

Nick Rockwell
SVP, Engineering at Fastly · | 46 upvotes · 3.2M views

When I joined NYT there was already broad dissatisfaction with the LAMP (Linux Apache HTTP Server MySQL PHP) Stack and the front end framework, in particular. So, I wasn't passing judgment on it. I mean, LAMP's fine, you can do good work in LAMP. It's a little dated at this point, but it's not ... I didn't want to rip it out for its own sake, but everyone else was like, "We don't like this, it's really inflexible." And I remember from being outside the company when that was called MIT FIVE when it had launched. And been observing it from the outside, and I was like, you guys took so long to do that and you did it so carefully, and yet you're not happy with your decisions. Why is that? That was more the impetus. If we're going to do this again, how are we going to do it in a way that we're gonna get a better result?

So we're moving quickly away from LAMP, I would say. So, right now, the new front end is React based and using Apollo. And we've been in a long, protracted, gradual rollout of the core experiences.

React is now talking to GraphQL as a primary API. There's a Node.js back end, to the front end, which is mainly for server-side rendering, as well.

Behind there, the main repository for the GraphQL server is a big table repository, that we call Bodega because it's a convenience store. And that reads off of a Kafka pipeline.

See more
Adam Neary

At Airbnb we use GraphQL Unions for a "Backend-Driven UI." We have built a system where a very dynamic page is constructed based on a query that will return an array of some set of possible “sections.” These sections are responsive and define the UI completely.

The central file that manages this would be a generated file. Since the list of possible sections is quite large (~50 sections today for Search), it also presumes we have a sane mechanism for lazy-loading components with server rendering, which is a topic for another post. Suffice it to say, we do not need to package all possible sections in a massive bundle to account for everything up front.

Each section component defines its own query fragment, colocated with the section’s component code. This is the general idea of Backend-Driven UI at Airbnb. It’s used in a number of places, including Search, Trip Planner, Host tools, and various landing pages. We use this as our starting point, and then in the demo show how to (1) make and update to an existing section, and (2) add a new section.

While building your product, you want to be able to explore your schema, discovering field names and testing out potential queries on live development data. We achieve that today with GraphQL Playground, the work of our friends at #Prisma. The tools come standard with Apollo Server.

#BackendDrivenUI

See more
Postman logo

Postman

92K
78.8K
1.8K
Only complete API development environment
92K
78.8K
+ 1
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PROS OF POSTMAN
  • 490
    Easy to use
  • 369
    Great tool
  • 276
    Makes developing rest api's easy peasy
  • 156
    Easy setup, looks good
  • 144
    The best api workflow out there
  • 53
    It's the best
  • 53
    History feature
  • 44
    Adds real value to my workflow
  • 43
    Great interface that magically predicts your needs
  • 35
    The best in class app
  • 12
    Can save and share script
  • 10
    Fully featured without looking cluttered
  • 8
    Collections
  • 8
    Option to run scrips
  • 8
    Global/Environment Variables
  • 7
    Shareable Collections
  • 7
    Dead simple and useful. Excellent
  • 7
    Dark theme easy on the eyes
  • 6
    Awesome customer support
  • 6
    Great integration with newman
  • 5
    Documentation
  • 5
    Simple
  • 5
    The test script is useful
  • 4
    Saves responses
  • 4
    This has simplified my testing significantly
  • 4
    Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,3
  • 4
    Easy as pie
  • 3
    API-network
  • 3
    I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis
  • 3
    Mocking API calls with predefined response
  • 2
    Now supports GraphQL
  • 2
    Postman Runner CI Integration
  • 2
    Easy to setup, test and provides test storage
  • 2
    Continuous integration using newman
  • 2
    Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable
  • 2
    Runner
  • 2
    Graph
  • 1
    <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>
CONS OF POSTMAN
  • 10
    Stores credentials in HTTP
  • 9
    Bloated features and UI
  • 8
    Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens
  • 7
    Poor GraphQL support
  • 5
    Expensive
  • 3
    Not free after 5 users
  • 3
    Can't prompt for per-request variables
  • 1
    Import swagger
  • 1
    Support websocket
  • 1
    Import curl

related Postman posts

Noah Zoschke
Engineering Manager at Segment · | 30 upvotes · 2.7M views

We just launched the Segment Config API (try it out for yourself here) — a set of public REST APIs that enable you to manage your Segment configuration. A public API is only as good as its #documentation. For the API reference doc we are using Postman.

Postman is an “API development environment”. You download the desktop app, and build API requests by URL and payload. Over time you can build up a set of requests and organize them into a “Postman Collection”. You can generalize a collection with “collection variables”. This allows you to parameterize things like username, password and workspace_name so a user can fill their own values in before making an API call. This makes it possible to use Postman for one-off API tasks instead of writing code.

Then you can add Markdown content to the entire collection, a folder of related methods, and/or every API method to explain how the APIs work. You can publish a collection and easily share it with a URL.

This turns Postman from a personal #API utility to full-blown public interactive API documentation. The result is a great looking web page with all the API calls, docs and sample requests and responses in one place. Check out the results here.

Postman’s powers don’t end here. You can automate Postman with “test scripts” and have it periodically run a collection scripts as “monitors”. We now have #QA around all the APIs in public docs to make sure they are always correct

Along the way we tried other techniques for documenting APIs like ReadMe.io or Swagger UI. These required a lot of effort to customize.

Writing and maintaining a Postman collection takes some work, but the resulting documentation site, interactivity and API testing tools are well worth it.

See more
Simon Reymann
Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH · | 27 upvotes · 4.7M views

Our whole Node.js backend stack consists of the following tools:

  • Lerna as a tool for multi package and multi repository management
  • npm as package manager
  • NestJS as Node.js framework
  • TypeScript as programming language
  • ExpressJS as web server
  • Swagger UI for visualizing and interacting with the API’s resources
  • Postman as a tool for API development
  • TypeORM as object relational mapping layer
  • JSON Web Token for access token management

The main reason we have chosen Node.js over PHP is related to the following artifacts:

  • Made for the web and widely in use: Node.js is a software platform for developing server-side network services. Well-known projects that rely on Node.js include the blogging software Ghost, the project management tool Trello and the operating system WebOS. Node.js requires the JavaScript runtime environment V8, which was specially developed by Google for the popular Chrome browser. This guarantees a very resource-saving architecture, which qualifies Node.js especially for the operation of a web server. Ryan Dahl, the developer of Node.js, released the first stable version on May 27, 2009. He developed Node.js out of dissatisfaction with the possibilities that JavaScript offered at the time. The basic functionality of Node.js has been mapped with JavaScript since the first version, which can be expanded with a large number of different modules. The current package managers (npm or Yarn) for Node.js know more than 1,000,000 of these modules.
  • Fast server-side solutions: Node.js adopts the JavaScript "event-loop" to create non-blocking I/O applications that conveniently serve simultaneous events. With the standard available asynchronous processing within JavaScript/TypeScript, highly scalable, server-side solutions can be realized. The efficient use of the CPU and the RAM is maximized and more simultaneous requests can be processed than with conventional multi-thread servers.
  • A language along the entire stack: Widely used frameworks such as React or AngularJS or Vue.js, which we prefer, are written in JavaScript/TypeScript. If Node.js is now used on the server side, you can use all the advantages of a uniform script language throughout the entire application development. The same language in the back- and frontend simplifies the maintenance of the application and also the coordination within the development team.
  • Flexibility: Node.js sets very few strict dependencies, rules and guidelines and thus grants a high degree of flexibility in application development. There are no strict conventions so that the appropriate architecture, design structures, modules and features can be freely selected for the development.
See more
REST logo

REST

20
191
0
A software architectural style
20
191
+ 1
0
PROS OF REST
  • 4
    Popularity
CONS OF REST
    Be the first to leave a con

    related REST posts

    Slick logo

    Slick

    9.2K
    1.2K
    0
    Database query and access library for Scala
    9.2K
    1.2K
    + 1
    0
    PROS OF SLICK
      Be the first to leave a pro
      CONS OF SLICK
        Be the first to leave a con

        related Slick posts

        Spring Data logo

        Spring Data

        585
        403
        0
        Provides a consistent approach to data access – relational, non-relational, map-reduce, and beyond
        585
        403
        + 1
        0
        PROS OF SPRING DATA
          Be the first to leave a pro
          CONS OF SPRING DATA
            Be the first to leave a con

            related Spring Data posts

            Остап Комплікевич

            I need some advice to choose an engine for generation web pages from the Spring Boot app. Which technology is the best solution today? 1) JSP + JSTL 2) Apache FreeMarker 3) Thymeleaf Or you can suggest even other perspective tools. I am using Spring Boot, Spring Web, Spring Data, Spring Security, PostgreSQL, Apache Tomcat in my project. I have already tried to generate pages using jsp, jstl, and it went well. However, I had huge problems via carrying already created static pages, to jsp format, because of syntax. Thanks.

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            DataGrip logo

            DataGrip

            552
            644
            17
            A database IDE for professional SQL developers
            552
            644
            + 1
            17
            PROS OF DATAGRIP
            • 4
              Works on Linux, Windows and MacOS
            • 3
              Code analysis
            • 2
              Diff viewer
            • 2
              Wide range of DBMS support
            • 1
              Generate ERD
            • 1
              Quick-fixes using keyboard shortcuts
            • 1
              Database introspection on 21 different dbms
            • 1
              Export data using a variety of formats using open api
            • 1
              Import data
            • 1
              Code completion
            CONS OF DATAGRIP
              Be the first to leave a con

              related DataGrip posts

              DBeaver logo

              DBeaver

              508
              694
              66
              A Universal Database Tool
              508
              694
              + 1
              66
              PROS OF DBEAVER
              • 21
                Free
              • 13
                Platform independent
              • 9
                Automatic driver download
              • 7
                Import-Export Data
              • 6
                Simple to use
              • 4
                Move data between databases
              • 4
                Wide range of DBMS support
              • 1
                SAP Hana DB support
              • 1
                Themes
              CONS OF DBEAVER
                Be the first to leave a con

                related DBeaver posts

                Manikandan Shanmugam
                Software Engineer at Blitzscaletech Software Solution · | 4 upvotes · 1.3M views
                Shared insights
                on
                AzureDataStudioAzureDataStudioDBeaverDBeaver

                Which tools are preferred if I choose to work on more data side? Which one is good if I decide to work on web development? I'm using DBeaver and am now considering a move to AzureDataStudio to break the monotony while working. I would like to hear your opinion. Which one are you using, and what are the things you are missing in dbeaver or data studio.

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